Trent (8 page)

“Yes. It’s ours. Thank you.” She turned back
to the water, and he felt her laughter. “You can make it up to me by cleaning
the fish for our dinner.”

He felt his heart sink. Trent would rather
have fought about the money. He knew less about cleaning fish than he did about
catching them. They might have to order a pizza if he was in charge of it.

Chapter 5

Tanner looked over the paperwork in front of
him. It was a timeline of events that led straight to the man who was still trying
to get in touch with Trent. He looked at Noah when the chair that he was
sitting in creaked. He’d not said a single word since he’d come by Tanner’s office
earlier this evening, asking to speak to him, and handed over a thick file with
the names Cartwright/Ford on it.

“Do you have any questions? You do look like
you might have a couple hundred.” Tanner nodded, then shook his head. Noah
laughed. “I have kept track of the man over the years, knowing that someday
he’d raise his head just enough for me to cut it off. Snakes…that’s the only
way that you can kill them properly, you know. You should also know that Joe
kept these notes for me, and she also has a law degree. Several others, as a
matter of fact, but she might be able to help you when you need someone. She’s
that good.”

“She’s been around.” Tanner flushed when he
realized what he’d said. “What I meant was she’s old. Christ, that’s not right
either. What I mean is...I have no idea what I mean.”

“Yes. Joe has been living a long time. I’m
assuming that was what you were trying to say.” Tanner told him it was. “As I
was saying, Joe has been keeping the notes that you see here. Most of them are
done by hand, but I do believe she might have transcribed them for easier
reading. You should ask her. When she watches over me during the day, there is
little for her to do, so she has become an expert at a great many things.”

“What happens with her now?” Noah asked him
what he meant. “I mean, she’s Trent’s mate. I don’t know what her plans are now,
but I’m sure she’s going to want to spend more time with him. Do you need a
watcher?”

“Are you volunteering for the job? And it’s ‘day
walker,’ not ‘watcher.’” Tanner told him he was, actually. “I don’t think you’d
be cut out for it. I don’t doubt that you’d keep me safe, but for the most part
Joe was only my day walker because I wanted her to be safe. Had I not taken her
in, she would never have survived the times she was born to. Times then were…let’s
just say that I kept her as safe as she did me. More so if you want to know the
truth. But as my day walker, you’d have to lead a very solitary life. Wolves
aren’t cut out to be alone, from my experience. I think that is why Joe was so
good at it. She cared as little for humans as I did at the time.”

“She is part of a pack now. I mean, as you
said, we’re not ones to be alone. She won’t...will she continue to work for
you?” Noah told him that it was up to her, but her watching over him wasn’t as
necessary as it had been before computers. “I would imagine that they’ve done a
lot for your kind. Alarms alone would have come a long way from when you were
born.”

“They have. As have a great many things.” Noah
glanced at the file before leaning back on the seat he was in. “Did you know
that in a blink of an eye, things could change that would make your hair turn
white? Say, the invention of cars for example. One night I was walking along a
dark road and this monstrous sound came from behind me. Turning, I saw these
two eyes, great shining things that had my heart pounding and me thinking the
gates of hell had opened up, and I was surely going to die for my terrible
crimes against humans. As I leapt into the grasses along the road, this monster
that was nothing more than a car with lights in the front of it drove by me. I lay
there for several minutes, trying to wrap my mind around what had just
happened. It didn’t occur to me until I was home that I could have simply left
the area before it got me…I was that terrified.”

They both laughed. Tanner could actually see
Noah being afraid of such a thing. His grandda, a man who was older than dirt
when Tanner was born, had told them over and over about how things had changed
too fast for him and his grandmother, and they’d moved to the mountains long
ago to be alone. He decided to call them for a visit soon.

Tanner knew that he was avoiding the work in
front of him. He needed to process, and he couldn’t do that sitting with the
paperwork in front of him. He had had to leave the firm he was at recently
because it had been too much for him to sit behind his desk all day and not be
allowed to roam the halls like he wanted. They apparently frowned upon that and
had stifled his mind when they’d confined him to one place for too long. It was
leave the well-paying job or go insane. Well, insaner.

“You think that she and Trent will make a
good pair?” He knew that wolves mated for life. But there were some things that
the two of them would have to overcome that normal wolves didn’t even encounter.
“She’s an immortal, she told us. What happens to her should you get hurt or
decide that you want to wash the stench of humans forever off your life?”

“You do have a way with words, don’t you,
young Tanner? I do believe I like that about you. You are…refreshing and fresh.
I think I’d like to hire you. But are you asking me if when I die she will join
me? No. She’s her own person and can do what she wishes. If you are asking me if,
should I perish, would she as well because of the bond we have, that answer is
also no. I have made her what she is so that if anything should happen to me,
she could go on with her life as she had before. But a good deal better off.” Tanner
nodded and glanced at the paperwork, then away again. “Trent is an immortal too
if they have exchanged blood. Which I’m sure they have, knowing the nature of
the wolf. He will not age and grow old and die, leaving her behind.”

“Does she know?” Noah told him she did about
herself, but not about Trent, at least he didn’t think so. “And are you
planning to tell them? Because I’m pretty sure that....”

He looked at the paperwork again, sitting
down now that what he’d been searching for hit him. He started moving the
timeline around. There were two of them here…one was for Ford, the other for
his partner, Jefferson Marshall. Tanner started talking as he made the things
line up.

“Jefferson only came on the scene about three
years ago. An otherwise unknown in the business world, he seemed to have his
shit together and enough funds to buy his way into about anything. When he met
Ford, he had just been widowed, or so he said in the interview he gave right
after joining Ford.” He nearly had it the way he wanted, but there was
something he was missing. As he continued, he looked through the file regarding
Ford. “Ford is a thief. Not only that, he had his hands in a great many pots
that seemed to just belly up about the time he was leaving; or in some instances,
he’d already left the company. But since Marshall joined him, he’s been pretty
stable. Not really a standup guy, but someone that seemed to know his business.
It wasn’t until Elijah and I started working on this project that he and Trent
were going to do that we discovered that on the surface he was a good guy, but in
the background, he’d not changed one bit.”

“You think they’re connected somehow, in the
past?” Tanner didn’t answer Noah. He was missing the thing that connected the
dots. As soon as he found it, he laid the picture down on the timeline about
four years before Ford had met Marshall. “Sydney?”

“She was the key. Sydney Carlin is somehow
going to figure in with this deal they have going. And I’m pretty sure that
Ford hasn’t seen it yet. Because if he has, he’s not really thinking that Jefferson
is any sort of threat. Do you know what happened to her after you left her? I
mean, that day or a few days thereafter?” Noah picked up the picture of the woman
he’d known about ten years ago. “According to this file, she died not long
after you were there, within about three weeks. But the article about her
doesn’t say how. And as far as I can see, there is no obit either. It was as if
no one cared enough to even run that. I thought she had a great deal of money?”

“There was never any money. But she was a
lovely thing. We had nice walks. Sydney knew what I was, I think, but she never
mentioned it and neither did I. We were just friends. She knew Joe as well.
Perhaps she would know. We left the area right after Ford was run out of town…might
have even been the same day. We were headed out anyway, so I can’t remember
that timeline very well.” Tanner watched the man in front of him and knew he
was trying to remember something big. “You might want to try and find a boy...well,
he’d be a man by now, but his name was Gibson. I’m not sure of his first name
other than I think it started with a B. Brad or Ben. Something like that. He
lived in the brownstone next to hers. Younger than her by a few years, but he
was infatuated with her. Gave me some trouble once or twice so I had to have a
little talk with him. Joe also talked with him, a number of times as a matter
of fact. I think they became friends of a sort. Joe could be helpful in
answering any questions about him.”

“You talked with him how? Did you force him
to not see her any longer?” Noah said no, it was just that he explained he had
been worried about a single woman living alone and had befriended her, and that
was it. “And you don’t think he might have hurt her?”

“No. Like I said, he was sort of in love with
her. He was a good boy. I don’t remember a great deal about him other than he
was a slightly overweight, nerdy type that had a great deal of computer
knowledge even back then.” Tanner made a mental note to see what he could find
out. “He did talk about Ford. Only he wasn’t Ford then. He was Cartwright. Benson
Cartwright. Hated the man on sight, as he had me at first. He might have seen
Ford coming and going from Sydney’s place and thought the man might hurt her,
as he had thought I would. Gibson might be one to talk to as well about what
happened to Sydney, other than the fact that she died. I, like you, think
there’s a connection.”

“When you told me about the night that Sydney
left Ford, you said that you told her to go home and call her friends. Did she
do that? And how exactly did you do it?” This time Noah got up to pace. Tanner
had an idea what he’d done to her, but he wanted to be sure. “Would she have
felt guilty about what she’d done to Ford?”

“I did force her to do those things, as
you’ve guessed. It wasn’t hard, however. She didn’t really trust him as much as
Ford thought. In fact, I don’t think she liked him at all and found him to be a
nuisance. He thought her to be stupid, and that was the sort of woman he preyed
on. Still does, as far as I can see. But would she have felt guilty? I don’t
think so. She was level-headed, smart, and had a good eye for art and saving
her money, what little she had of it. I think Ford thought her to be rich. And
she did carry herself that way, but she had nothing more than her rent and food
money most of the time.” He stopped pacing and looked at him. “I keep coming
back to the young man that lived next door to her. There was something there,
but I never looked into it. Something about him that keeps tugging at my
memory.”

Tanner got up to get his laptop. He had a
desktop computer he used mostly, but he wanted to continue this with all the
files in front of him. Putting in the name Gibson and the year with the street
name, he hit on it almost immediately.

“He found her body. I mean, that’s what the
paper says here. His first name was Benny, not a nickname but his birth name. At
the time of her death the paper says he was seventeen. And Miss Carlin was only
twenty-four.” Tanner did a quick image search on his name. “Fuck me. It’s him. It’s
Jefferson Marshall.”

He showed the picture to Noah, who sat down
hard on the couch. “That’s it. That’s the tug. I remember the boy turned man. I
mean, I can see it as clear as day now. Benny, yes that’s it. He really hated
Ford then. Fuck. Do you think Ford knows? Of course not. If he did, he’d call
him out or kill him. Death would be what I’d do. But why now? I mean, it’s been
about ten years. Why do you suppose he’s taken so long to do whatever it is he
has planned?”

“You said yourself that Ford changed himself.
Why, we don’t know for sure. It could have been because of you. We both know
that he’s been hunting you down by way of Joe. He didn’t know until last night
that you had figured it out. So why is Jefferson after him? Because you know as
well as I do that there is no way they just happened to hook up.” Tanner looked
at the picture and thought the man to be a little nerdy. Much like he supposed
he’d been as a child, but more so now. “He’s after Ford. For something. And I’d
bet it has to do with Miss Carlin.”

“No. They did not just happen to hook up.
You’re right, I’d bet anything on it that he’s after Max for something. But what?”
He got up to pace again. “We need Joe here. She has a better mind than most
people I know. When are they set to return?”

“Well, that could be a problem.” Noah asked
him why. “Mom told me this morning that Trent has asked to buy the cabin off
them. He and Joe want to live there for the rest of their days away from the
city.”

“Well fuck a duck and watch it waddle.” Yeah,
Tanner thought, that about summed it up. “I guess we will have to go to them
then. When can you be ready to leave?”

They made plans to meet up tomorrow night and
then Noah left. He also left behind his paperwork. Tanner knew that he should
go to bed, but he had to find a job. Not even his parents knew yet that he’d
left his paying job, and he was quickly running out of excuses and money to
support himself. Pulling out the paper, he started going through the help
wanted pages looking for just about anything right now. But without much in the
way of experience as a trucker or a layperson, he wasn’t really qualified to do
much of anything but be an attorney.